Solidarity has a long history as one of the most central and elusive

concepts in socialist language. This article aims to examine social democratic

solidarity as a propagandistic and ideological concept in the 1980s, time of

political rupture when solidarity was being reassessed and redefined. The

concept is examined in the monthly magazines of the Swedish social democratic

youth and women’s branch organisations Tvärdrag, Frihet and Morgonbris. The

study shows that the place and function of the concept of solidarity is

ambiguous. On the one hand, the concept emerges as ideologically central in

that its meaning is subject to struggle. The ambivalent relationship of social

democracy to neoliberal influences exemplifies this. Solidarity could be

presented as the antithesis of neoliberalism, while in other texts and contexts

the concept was almost depoliticised by placing it in the sphere of the private

sphere or presented as the responsibility of the individual.